Anika

Portishead's Geoff Barrow and his side project Beak> back European chanteuse Anika on a mix of covers and originals.

The most refreshing part about Anika's eponymous debut album is just how unambitious it is. You'd be right to be skeptical of Portishead's Geoff Barrow linking up with another European singer with a deadpan, dramatic voice, but Anika isn't an attempt to capitalize on past glories. Instead, it's a further delving into Barrow's record-nerd fantasies after 2009's krautrock-isms with his band, Beak>. Recorded quickly, and live, Anika preens like high art but eventually reveals itself as a loving and minor pet project.

Barrow and the rest of Beak> back Anika, a Berlin/Bristol-based journalist who stumbles and fusses with a Nico-like charm. She doesn't have a fantastic voice, but she's patient and plays a very specific role-- the emotionally detached European chanteuse-- without ego. That's key too, because this type of muse-pop is usually conducted in the interest of star-making (see: Nico, Brigitte Bardot). Anika and Beak> instead focus on teasing the emotional intricacies out of old songs and styles by pairing them with rougher, niche sonics. The majority of the tracks on Anika are covers, leaning heavily on 1960s pop and folk.

Beak> augment Anika's droll talk/sing with a dubby, beat-driven noir that borrows from minimal wave's chunky rhythms and post-punk's spindly verve. "Terry" and "End of the World" transform teenage naïveté into lingering fear, though the group is better when the strangeness of the material-- Yoko Ono's "Yang Yang"-- is on par with the music's obscure referents. (An exception: an airy, organ-led rendition of Ray Davies' "I Go to Sleep" closes the album on its most tender note.) The group's two original productions-- the paranoid "No One's There" and the punky "Officer Officer"-- are lyrically tenser than their counterparts and not as rewarding, but they allow Beak> to build some noisy, industrial momentum. The group's biggest and most prevalent misstep is a seven-minute cover of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" (never Dylan's most tuneful or clever song), one they repeat with a dub version (this begs the question: do dub-leaning bands really need dub edits?). Beak> turn it into a call-and-response bass epic but can't escape its ham-fisted politics, however fitting they must seem.

It's tempting to accuse Barrow of formalism-- Anika sounds just that familiar-- but he's earned the right, and moreover, the treatments here are clever and well executed. Beak>'s productions will jar and quiver in a good pair of headphones, and Anika presents herself as a faithful cipher rather than a Brand New Talent. Anika is shortsighted in the best way: it's a tribute, an exercise, the charming kind.